


Rusty's Worst Day

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Ocean's (Movies)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-10-07
Updated: 2005-10-07
Packaged: 2018-01-25 06:21:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1636193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The worst day of Rusty's life wasn't really a <I>one</I> day type of thing.<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	Rusty's Worst Day

**Author's Note:**

> Written for ladybug218

 

 

 

 

The worst day of Rusty's life wasn't really a _one_ day type of thing. Rusty was an up-beat, see the platinum lining, half-full tumbler of scotch, kind of guy, but the day Danny got married and the day Danny got pinched were not good days for Rusty.

Hence the worst day split.

*

Rusty and Danny had codes--well, Danny often came up with complex code phrases meant to signify anything from a job gone wrong to a guy in a bad suit at the next table. These codes he constructed randomly, and usually soused, so Rusty didn't pay much attention. Those weren't the codes that Rusty considered _their_ codes. Those were just "humor the drunk Danny" codes. Real codes were Danny's head tilted to the right with his eyes squinting meaning a mark gone hinky, and two fingers adjusting his collar in the front meaning boredom.

A swift rotation of Danny's head with his face towards the floor meant suppressed amusement.

Danny calling at three in the morning from New York was not a code or a sign. It was just Danny, who'd always had a privileged attitude and no boundaries when it came to Rusty. Not that Rusty attempted to erect any.

"Yup," the air conditioning unit in the hotel room kicked over as Rusty fumbled the phone against his ear.

"You asleep?" The connection was bad, washed out and crackling. The burr in Danny's voice, still clear over a continent, cleared a bit of the sleep from Rusty's mind.

Rusty didn't respond for two clicks. His instinct bent towards sarcasm, which was a defense, and Danny hadn't even given him reason to be defensive yet. He sat up, the hard plastic of the hotel phone receiver clicking against the ring he perennially wore--the one he couldn't remember buying or ever putting on. He was never all that superstitious; he just hadn't decided to take it off yet. "What now?"

"What makes you think something's wrong?"

"Your redirection gives me some indication."

There was a long pause where Danny shifted the phone to his other ear and smacked his lips closed. Danny had never been good with the hard truths. Or with truth period.

"You married her." While Danny dealt with the big picture, the start and finish, the philosophy of a job, Rusty focused on the here and now, the facts. Rusty could deal with facts, but that didn't mean he always wanted to.

Tess in play made Danny and Rusty's dynamic chaotic, harder to suss, but not impossible for Rusty. He knew Danny, knew that when it came down to it Danny didn't really make the decisions. He was a team player acute enough to be able to read the silent consent of his team, knew when he could push and when he had to accept the inevitable. Tess took away even the illusion of control.

"Yup," Danny finally zinged out a response to what wasn't ever a question.

"I'll send you a gift. Where're you registered?" Rusty had faced down guns and cops and cons on meth benders--he could handle Danny.

"Russ..."

"Spare us both the big speech." That was the harshest thing Rusty ever said about Tess to Danny. Not that he didn't have a few gems stored up. Starting with her sense of style.

Rusty hung up. Danny didn't call right back because they weren't fifteen year-old girls. They were Danny and Rusty, and that meant that Danny fucked up and Rusty either waited it out or cleaned it up.

*

The thing about being partners is that even when you decide it's over or you're going to take a break, that never really happens. Danny married Tess, and Rusty spent some time in Mexico with Basher. He took some career development time, and learned a thing or two about compression coils and the myths about colored wiring.

One of the things about Rusty that most people wouldn't believe if he told them was that he wasn't much for one-night stands or cheap sex -- unless he was very rearranged by chemical substances. Any self-evident truth about a person could be erased with enough cocaine and booze.

Rusty never judged himself or others based on their _impaired_ moments, and Rusty spent the first year of Danny's marriage to Tess trying to turn his personality inside out.

He got sloppy on every level.

The amazing part was that no one seemed to notice; Rusty sloppy was still better than anyone else.

He adjusted his code of conduct to sleep with anyone that dressed well enough, smelled like anything but Bay Rum aftershave, and got to him before the next best possibility. Rusty fucked his way into more contacts in Europe than INTERPOL.

On this eight month bender, he made a new rep for himself. Now, he was Rusty Ryan, American lothario, contract fixer.

A lot of the times it's easier to fool yourself than to fool your friends.

Reuben got a hold of him in Istanbul.

"What fucking time is it there? Oh, never mind. Have you lost your mind?" The line was pretty clear considering the distance from Vegas to Turkey.

The window unit air conditioner coughed and rattled as Rusty considered how to play the situation.

"Hello, Mr. Ryan, I fucking know you're there. Listen, I'm not the boss of you, and I ain't your babysitter neither, but I'm still going to save you from yourself before you end up in a Turkish prison or with herpes...wait, you've probably..."

"What's the job Reuben?" That train of thought would have led through every venereal disease known to man if Rusty hadn't corked it, and probably a few not known to man due to mispronunciation.

"Oh, you know, a little of this, a lot of that. Nothing you can't handle in your sleep. Plane ticket's waiting on you. KLM. Your real name because how's a body supposed to know otherwise?"

The refusal sat on Rusty's tongue. It never made it out of his mouth.

"They're split up, by the way." Reuben sounded more concerned than smug, which meant he'd _seen_ Danny, and it was bad.

"I'll be on the flight."

Danny met him at the airport. There was a whole episode in Belize.

That was the first time Danny and Tess split. Rusty was stupid enough to believe it would stick.

*

People not in the life probably think criminals know everything about finessing the legal system. That's not true in the slightest. If you're good, you don't know shit about it due to a lack of exposure - unless you're _way_ up the ladder and have your own law firm keeping you oblivious to the details.

Rusty Ryan was arrested once before Danny went away--for DUI. He had a fake driver's license. He skipped the court day - correction: Jake Hamilton skipped his court date, and Failure to Appear was a big deal, poor Mr. Hamilton.

Since Rusty'd had his own steep decline and blue period, he thought he understood Danny all the better when Tess dumped his ass for what looked like the final time. He was wrong on both accounts.

Something was a lot more off than Rusty twigged to until the Mask job was in the works.

When Rusty walked through the door to the living room of his suit the night before the hand-over, Danny sat in the dark, silent and watchful. Rusty saw him as the door slammed behind his back, a quick strobe of the hallway light flashing over Danny's face.

"Heard about Europe." Danny spoke out of the darkness, the heavy drapes of the luxury suite blacking out even the remnants of streetlights and passing cars.

"Which part?" Rusty wasn't off the rails. He could still play it cool with Danny. Always. Instead of breaking down his veneer, Danny reinforced what the rest of the world got, built it up just by existing.

Rusty slumped against the doorframe, his coat dangling from his hand.

"You know which part." And Danny actually sounded wounded. Rusty knew it was genuine. A tiny flare of the old anger hit him. Anger was dangerous, though; it made you sloppy, lazy, and blind. Rusty knew all about it after eight months of letting anger dictate his life.

"I think this is a conversation we don't need to have." Rusty tossed his jacket into the dark.

"I think you're wrong."

Relationships are constructed out of falsehoods, latent expectations, and wishful thinking. Some fall to pieces when the configuration realigns. Some are resilient, rearranging around new lies, new hopes, new beliefs.

Danny and Rusty were nothing if not resilient.

Rusty already expected the hand on his arm before it came, before he smelled the smoky alcohol burn of scotch mixed with cigarette smoke, wool and the nutmeg and allspice bite of Danny's cologne.

There was a luminous second where Rusty's world clicked into a new pattern, where he could actually see the progression of his life and the con he'd worked on himself from day one--that Danny would figure his life out on his own--and all he felt was amusement. He really was an up-beat guy.

"I don't like her." He'd never said it out loud. Not once. He didn't think he had to. Which was a huge mistake when dealing with Danny.

"I'm getting that."

Rusty had been drinking, and later in his angrier moments he figured Danny thought that was the only way to get done what he wanted to get done. He was very wrong.

Danny's hand tightened around Rusty's bicep as Danny pressed himself flush against his back, his other arm coming around his waist. His lips brushed Rusty's hairline on the back of his neck as Rusty snatched Danny's hand off his belly and brought his index and middle fingers into Rusty's mouth.

"I knew it," Danny's laughing moan was a job in the bag, Christmas in the Bahamas, and all the years they fucked this up twined together.

Rusty only stopped sucking on Danny's fingers when Danny spun him around so they faced each other.

Danny's mouth tasted like scotch and unspoken promises. Rusty backed Danny towards what he hoped was the wall. He missed, and they went sprawling when Danny tripped on the leg of the coffee table, Rusty's weight collapsing on top of him.

"And here I was counting on all your experience to make this a smooth ride." Jokes during sex were definitely exactly Danny's style.

Rusty smiled as he bent his head and brought his mouth to knock against Danny's ear. "You calling me a slut?"

"If the condom fits..."

"Oooh, woohoo, ouch, that one was a clunker." Rusty bit the side of Danny's neck.

"I got a bunch stored up regarding your oral fixation. How about..."

Rusty bore down on Danny's leg with his hips. "How about we don't."

"Hey, Russ, how about we don't?" The familiar echoing statement broke in the middle, the words cracking as Rusty rubbed his ring against Danny's cock.

Danny in bed was just like Danny out of bed--earnest, thorough, clever and deft. Rusty had no complaints.

The morning after wasn't one. It was all toast and coffee and Danny reading the financial section of the paper just like he'd come over from his suite first thing instead of rolling over and licking the edges of Rusty's tattoo.

The rest of the day wasn't all that great.

Ok, it was a clusterfuck of epic proportions.

Danny got a flat tire on the interstate with the masks in the trunk en route to the drop off. This was after their first fence missed the rendezvous. Which was after Rusty got made by a security guard at the museum. After all that Danny got a call in Rusty's hotel room from Tess telling him she was filing for divorce.

Ok, so if Rusty had to pick his worst day ever, yeah, the day Danny got pinched was probably marginally worse than the day Danny married Tess.

 

 

 


End file.
